AMD A8-5600K

The AMD A8-5600K is a desktop APU based on the Trinity architecture. The chip is produced ​​in a 32nm process and integrates 2 modules with 4 CPU cores clocked at 3.6 up to 3.9 GHz. Furthermore, the 5600K has a Radeon HD 7560D graphics unit and a DDR3-1866 memory controller. Due to the unlocked multiplier, the CPU can overclock very easily.

The CPU cores are based on a reworked Bulldozer architecture, called Piledriver. Although marketed as a quad-core processor, the A8-5600K includes only two modules with four integer-cores and two floating-point units in total. As a result, the CPU is not a true quad-core processor.

Depending on the benchmark, the CPU performance of the A8-5600K is slightly below the desktop Core i3-3220. The chip shows good performance on applications with high parallelization, whereas performance per thread is less impressive. For everyday tasks like office programs, multimedia applications or Internet surfing, the 5600K is suitable without restrictions; even demanding 3D games are possible if using dedicated graphics card.

The integrated DirectX 11-compatible Radeon HD 7560D offers only 256 shader cores (7660D: 384) and a clock rate of 760 MHz with no Turbo support. On average, the performance of the HD 7560D GPU is comparable to a dedicated notebook Radeon HD 6630M and somewhat faster than the HD Graphics 4000 as found on Intel’s Ivy Bridge platform.

The power consumption of the entire desktop APU is rated at 100 Watts.